Super Mario 64 Any% Speedrun World Record Broken

When speedrunners are let loose on a game to finish it by any means necessary, they cruise and that's just what Drozdowsky has done with his world record of Super Mario 64 Any% run without getting a single star.

A two year record held by Japanese runner Akira has just been beat by Drozdowsky who was just successful in getting a 6 minutes and 41 second run, beating out the previous record by 3 seconds. Just being able to beat Super Mario 64 without getting a single star is impressive on its own, but doing it in just shy of seven minutes is incredible. Anyone who has never seen this style of speedrun should take the time to watch the video, just know that there are a lot of advanced glitches at work here, so it may not make a lot of sense to those new with this particular run. Usually players have to get a set number of stars to get beyond certain gates, but runners are able to circumvent those rules.

Now, there are glitchless runs of Super Mario 64 as well, but using clever clipping and a weird physics trick, players are able to skip all around Peach’s Castle. The infamous endless stairs have been bested in this fashion for many years now. It’s a trick that’s not incredibly difficult to learn, but to do it quickly and consistently takes a ton of practice.

For a description of the history of the Mario 64 speedrun, we highly recommend this video by SummoningSalt on YouTube. There is a lot of effort put into explaining each exploit and which runners have been known for this particular category. It's a fascinating watch.

What’s crazy about this run is that there is a bonk (bumping into a wall, which loses time) right before the last Bowser fight. With a couple more attempts Drozdowsky could push the record just a bit further. That said though, this time likely won’t receive any major improvements without the discovery of another glitch or some improvement in routing, which is almost perfect already.

Getting a record (Note that this is not a record through Twin Galaxies’ official adjudication process, but one through SR) in any game is really impressive, but to get one on a game that is one of the most popular speedruns ever is something else entirely. Super Mario 64 has been extensively explored by speedrunners in every way imaginable, so anytime there is a record hit it’s something to celebrate.

Congrats to Drozdowsky for achieving greatness. This could be a speedrun that stands for quite some time.